Tri-state Emergency Repairs Set

July 01, 1988|By Neil H. Mehler.

Emergency repairs for the Tri-State Tollway bridge over the East-West Tollway and construction of two long-promised ramps at 95th Street were approved Thursday by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority.

The $513,000 bridge repair project, authorized to start immediately, will replace bridge elements that have become fatigued and show small cracks. It is expected to take three months and will require daytime closings of one lane on the East-West Tollway eastbound ramp to the northbound Tri-State and one below the bridge in each direction where the East-West meets the Eisenhower Expressway.

Thomas H. Morsch Jr., tollway authority executive director, has said the bridge situation isn`t dangerous and repairs will be done between rush hours to minimize inconvenience to the 125,000 drivers using the Tri-State in that area and 70,000 drivers on the tollway below it.

Since the Dan Ryan Expressway widening and resurfacing work began in spring, state highway officials have been touting the Tri-State as an alternate route for traffic seeking to bypass Chicago. Vehicle counts on the south Tri-State have grown 10.5 percent this year, about 3.5 to 4.5 percentage points above recent annual growth, the tollway authority said.

Tollway officials said they have had calls from people who use the Tri-State and East-West to commute to work about doing the repair work at the same time that many other construction projects in the metropolitan area are lenghtening driving times. But the project needs to be completed as soon as possible to restore the bridge to the desired standards, officials said.

The Tri-State bridge repairs are to be done by Kustom Construction Co. Inc., Lombard.

The cracks were discovered in a regular inspection of bridge members. Similar cracks were found in 1979 and the bridge has been watched carefully for that reason, officials said. It is the only bridge on the system of steel- frame construction.

Kustom was the only contractor to respond to a bid solicitation and came in about $40,000 below the engineer`s estimate of the cost. The lack of competitive bidding was attributed by tollway Chief Engineer Marc A. Hillier to the fact that contractors are busy.

The $5 million ramp project, which will allow northbound Tri-State traffic to exit at 95th Street and southbound traffic to enter the tollway there, was called ``a blessing for the southwest suburbs`` by Hickory Hills Mayor Ray Kay.

Kay said in an interview that he has been working for five years to get the ramps built because motorists from his area now have to go to 79th Street to get on the southbound tollway and it is a difficult and sometimes dangerous detour for many of them.

There are two ramps at 95th Street now. The new ramps will have attendant-operated toll booths, Morsch said.

The work, which is scheduled to begin July 11 and is expected to take about a year, will be done by Kiewit Western Co., Elk Grove Village.

Morsch said the 95th Street ramp project ``has been on the books for three years.`` He has said previously that constructing southbound ramps there and possibly later at 159th Street would be in response to the growing population and importance of the southwest suburbs.

Additional exits and entrances to the 256-mile state tollway system are under consideration, as well as adding a lane in each direction in the heavily traveled midsection of the Tri-State, Morsch has said.